Reflections on the NZ Software Engineering Strategy
Something sitting in my reading list for a while is the Aotearoa New Zealand Software Engineering Strategy. I’m glad to have made the time, it’s a thoughtful piece of work, and honestly, it’s fantastic to see such a broad group of software engineering academics from across the motu come together around a shared vision—and manage to find consensus.
The strategy is framed around the big picture: how software engineering research in Aotearoa can support national priorities, lift capability, and build a more sustainable and equitable future. It’s deeply local in its framing, recognising both our strengths and our challenges, and weaving in threads of mātauranga Māori, equity, and cultural responsiveness.
There are four core research priorities:
Empowering Human Developers – improving the experience and capability of people writing and maintaining code.
Reliable Systems at Scale – ensuring our software is robust, secure, and fit for purpose.
Software for Social Good – focusing on projects that deliver real-world impact, especially in areas like education, health, and sustainability.
Sustainable Software Development – from reducing energy use to building tools and practices that stand the test of time.
It’s easy to be excited about this direction. But it’s also worth balancing that with a bit of industry reality. For many of our members, life in software engineering doesn’t always feel this strategic. Delivery pressure, outdated systems, and resource constraints often take precedence over research, reflection or reinvention. There’s a long-standing gap between academic research and industry practice—and while this strategy doesn’t solve that, it could be a really helpful step in the right direction.
So what can we do with it?
If you work in software or tech leadership, I encourage you to give it a read and share with your colleagues. Think about where you might already align with these research priorities—or where you wish you did. Are you doing work that contributes to social good? Are your developers empowered? What would it take to build more sustainable systems?
You might like to explore developer productivity, or experiment with tools that support more sustainable coding practices. Perhaps you’ll see an opportunity to contribute to software for social good through your own mahi or volunteer sharing your skills and capabilities.
Final thought
I can’t help but wonder - maybe the bigger question: what would it take for industry and academia to work more closely together?
While it’s inspiring to see our academics align on priorities for software engineering in Aotearoa, the biggest impact will come when we build deeper, sustained collaboration between those creating knowledge and those applying it daily. We need shared spaces—figurative and literal—where ideas can be tested against real-world complexity, and where the challenges of practice can shape the direction of research. If we can get that right, the outcomes for our sector, and for Aotearoa, could be transformative.
